Religion and being religious is bad.
I do not like religions. It divides human beings and destroys humanity. To me religion means an affilitiaion to a particular belief. All religions say they have the ultimate aim of reaching god/heven/understand the truth or whatever. But in reality they impose a set of rules and the followers blindly follow(being religious) it and set an affilitiaion to a particular way of living life(instead of understanding the real intention of the belief) and oppose and fight others.
While Religion is a mix of Dharma + philisophy + rituals. In reality the rituals supersede the philosophy and order(dharma) behind it as most humans are stupidm or ignorant and dont reason why they do things. Even most religious people break religious rules for some gain or evil purposes. so what the point in having religions? Religions through history has only complemented politics and served as a reason for doing all kind of evil things.
So religions(with respect to god/philosophy) are bad.
If some one gets spiritual, understands philosophy and logic behind the religion, then they are not religious anymore. They can be considered spiritual, as they follow the phisolophy in spirit and not litrally and ritiulastically.
Philosophy/Dharma etc are the same for all of humanity. It is the rules of logic and common sense for the good of humanity.
Now do you understand the difference between religion and dharma/belief etc and why religions are bad.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
What is Hinduism?
Hindu is an arabic/perisan word which refered to people, who lived beyond the river sindu which in persian was called hindu and greek indus thus India. the word hind in persian is equal to the greek word india and the word hindu is a synonym of Indian.
Hinduism is an anglasized form of the word hindu which refers to all the beliefs followed by the people of hind(hindustan aka Bharatvarsh the real name of India).
so it is not one particular faith/belief/religion but a collective noun which refers to all indic beliefs, lifestyles,culture, science, medicene, etc.. It can be compared to Americanism, europeanism, africanism chinese-ism or what ever but not compared to cristianity, islam, etc.
Believers of hindu religions live all over the world, it has high following in indonesia, java malaysia and other SEasian countries. but they all cannot be called hindus in one sense and be called hindus in another. this is because Hinduims has many meanings.
1. hindu = hindustani, indian, barathiya vasi (people of the land beyond the sindhu from the west based on the arabic/persian word), in this context india and hind mean the same.
2. all the religions of hind or hindustan followed by the inhabitants of india today.
3. sanathana dharma or universal duty of righteousness (or common ness) of all indic religions
4. the indian way of life including the indian social systems and customs.
5. a religion which is based on the original vedic philospphy and which has been trans formed over many thousands of years and still the core vedic ideas remain which some minor changes in the view points.
it is because of the meaning 1 that we say all indians are hindus including muslims, christians etc..
it is because of meaning 2. that we say that jainism, sikhism and all other indic religions as hinduism.
it is because of 3. that we see so many different forms of god. in the medeival or ancient times, the vedics attempted to convert and encompass all major, minor and pagan beliefs into a commonfold called the sanathana dharma as their belief was of a single god which man can perceive in different forms. this was done by adding such gods as characters in puranas to bring social acceptance and belief in people that they can worship any of the forms ans still they pray to the same one common god.
it is because of meaning 4 which includes the smirithis of hinduism which are rejected by other indic religions, the reason why one has to be born hindu and not be converted . its like saying one has to be born indian and cannot be converted to indian. It is a ethinic or cultural or regional identity and not a religion. this is changing in modern times as the smirithis and other social customs are time bound and needs to change according to times. caste system and things like hindu of indian birth only are chaning today. these days, some hindu sects/faiths religions do allow conversion like Arya Samaj , ISKON
Vedic dharma or Sanatana Dharma is the basis of most if not all indic beliefs. even today, there are many local and pagan beliefs(like village gods, iyanar, kali, amman temples which are not vedic or vedantic gods, they are non agamic) which are considered hindu, which surely does not follow the vedic/vedantic dharma or the social systems of smrithi but these are all constuients of the universal religion of sanatana darma. these pagan religions were initially non vedic but later merged to become sanatana darma and accepted the vedic authority and these are now a mix of vedic + pagan beliefs. though recently there have been attempts by politicians to divide people again to create vote banks and these pagan beliefs are being delinked from the vedas and sanathana dharma ideologies.
Also Dharma is different from religion.
i.e, hinduism is not a religion in the usual sense. It is an umbrella term used to encompass all indic faiths. it is not a single belief system. It is a collection of indic beliefs.
Atleast it is a misnomer for Vedantic dharma(the major intredient of sanathana dharma followed today), which itself has many schools of thought. Moreover most indians follow more than one hindu belief simply because they dont understand their religion i.e., ignorance. infact the influence of sanathana dharma is so secular that they would go to a church or dharga and still pray to the god as their god.
Brahminism(or vedantism), Buddhism, Jainism, Saivism, Vaisnavism, Saktism etc can be considered hindu religions or sub-religions.
Hinduims can be a religion for the West who are ignorant of what faiths we Indians follow and especially see and compare all beliefs to the Abrahamic religions. But surely an indian cannot consider hinduism as a religion. its like saying islam as arab-ism or christianity as israel-ism. The problem is we always see, learn and do things as seen by the west.
If we do consider that when people refer to hinduism they refer to Sanathana dharma, it is still a misnomer as Sanathana dharma means universal duties of righteousness or universal laws for being right.
Since Sanathana dharma is universal, attaching it to a regional/narrow scope of hindus or indians is not right.
Hindu is an arabic/perisan word which refered to people, who lived beyond the river sindu which in persian was called hindu and greek indus thus India. the word hind in persian is equal to the greek word india and the word hindu is a synonym of Indian.
Hinduism is an anglasized form of the word hindu which refers to all the beliefs followed by the people of hind(hindustan aka Bharatvarsh the real name of India).
so it is not one particular faith/belief/religion but a collective noun which refers to all indic beliefs, lifestyles,culture, science, medicene, etc.. It can be compared to Americanism, europeanism, africanism chinese-ism or what ever but not compared to cristianity, islam, etc.
Believers of hindu religions live all over the world, it has high following in indonesia, java malaysia and other SEasian countries. but they all cannot be called hindus in one sense and be called hindus in another. this is because Hinduims has many meanings.
1. hindu = hindustani, indian, barathiya vasi (people of the land beyond the sindhu from the west based on the arabic/persian word), in this context india and hind mean the same.
2. all the religions of hind or hindustan followed by the inhabitants of india today.
3. sanathana dharma or universal duty of righteousness (or common ness) of all indic religions
4. the indian way of life including the indian social systems and customs.
5. a religion which is based on the original vedic philospphy and which has been trans formed over many thousands of years and still the core vedic ideas remain which some minor changes in the view points.
it is because of the meaning 1 that we say all indians are hindus including muslims, christians etc..
it is because of meaning 2. that we say that jainism, sikhism and all other indic religions as hinduism.
it is because of 3. that we see so many different forms of god. in the medeival or ancient times, the vedics attempted to convert and encompass all major, minor and pagan beliefs into a commonfold called the sanathana dharma as their belief was of a single god which man can perceive in different forms. this was done by adding such gods as characters in puranas to bring social acceptance and belief in people that they can worship any of the forms ans still they pray to the same one common god.
it is because of meaning 4 which includes the smirithis of hinduism which are rejected by other indic religions, the reason why one has to be born hindu and not be converted . its like saying one has to be born indian and cannot be converted to indian. It is a ethinic or cultural or regional identity and not a religion. this is changing in modern times as the smirithis and other social customs are time bound and needs to change according to times. caste system and things like hindu of indian birth only are chaning today. these days, some hindu sects/faiths religions do allow conversion like Arya Samaj , ISKON
Vedic dharma or Sanatana Dharma is the basis of most if not all indic beliefs. even today, there are many local and pagan beliefs(like village gods, iyanar, kali, amman temples which are not vedic or vedantic gods, they are non agamic) which are considered hindu, which surely does not follow the vedic/vedantic dharma or the social systems of smrithi but these are all constuients of the universal religion of sanatana darma. these pagan religions were initially non vedic but later merged to become sanatana darma and accepted the vedic authority and these are now a mix of vedic + pagan beliefs. though recently there have been attempts by politicians to divide people again to create vote banks and these pagan beliefs are being delinked from the vedas and sanathana dharma ideologies.
Also Dharma is different from religion.
i.e, hinduism is not a religion in the usual sense. It is an umbrella term used to encompass all indic faiths. it is not a single belief system. It is a collection of indic beliefs.
Atleast it is a misnomer for Vedantic dharma(the major intredient of sanathana dharma followed today), which itself has many schools of thought. Moreover most indians follow more than one hindu belief simply because they dont understand their religion i.e., ignorance. infact the influence of sanathana dharma is so secular that they would go to a church or dharga and still pray to the god as their god.
Brahminism(or vedantism), Buddhism, Jainism, Saivism, Vaisnavism, Saktism etc can be considered hindu religions or sub-religions.
Hinduims can be a religion for the West who are ignorant of what faiths we Indians follow and especially see and compare all beliefs to the Abrahamic religions. But surely an indian cannot consider hinduism as a religion. its like saying islam as arab-ism or christianity as israel-ism. The problem is we always see, learn and do things as seen by the west.
If we do consider that when people refer to hinduism they refer to Sanathana dharma, it is still a misnomer as Sanathana dharma means universal duties of righteousness or universal laws for being right.
Since Sanathana dharma is universal, attaching it to a regional/narrow scope of hindus or indians is not right.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Who are the dravidians.
This is Work in progress.
Dravidian is a term wrongly attributed to a race or ethinicity of people of south india.
Dravida is a sanskrit term used to denote a geographical region south of the vindhyas, which is mainly th costal regions and the term itself denotes costal or seafarign people.
there have been a lot of distortions made about the racial and ethinic identities of these people during the british times to divide and rule the people of india.
on considerable research on would find that most of the caste and non caste people of south have migrated to the south from jot just north india but as far as iran and central asia over many centuries in various waves.
infact the word dravidian is a sanskrit/prakrit word. and it denotes a geographic region only. and it has notthing to do with tamil as a language except that tamil was a primary and oldest language in dravidian region for the past 2000 or more years. hence linguists used this term to denote languages of this region. which was later distorted with racial connotations.
The question is about vedic civilization and non vedic(like proto-shaivic) ones in india. vedic civilization expanded/assimilated to include all non vedic ones into it as early as late rig vedic times and sure ly by yejur veda times. so by 1000 bc most non vedic beliefs like proto-shaivaism in north and many other pagan and tribal beliefs had merged to form the hinduism of the vedantic times (aka post-vedic or vedantic or puranic or hindu culture, I will use these words interchangably). the prakrit speaking groups were wery much part of these. south got added to the post-vedic civilization's expantion around 3000 years ago and the first waves were that of the late vedic shiva worshiping aryans. this is clear from the fact that shaiva faith merged with the pagan/tribal faiths in the south first and then other vedic influence came later.
Tamil language as an independent identity never existed before 2000-2500 years ago. i.e., it evolved from proto-dravidian in the classical ages around 500 b.c to 1000 a.d and not in ancient or prehistoric ages when post-vedic civilization was started.
so tamil was very much part of post-vedic civilization except the language was different. hence has had a distinct flavour within the hindu civilization. which was the case not just about tamil but also various other prakritic languages like pali, abharahamsa etc in the heartland of vedic culture. i.e., in delhi, bihar, nepal, punjab etc.
similarly in persian which was in iran, the north eastern languages, SEasia and etc. which all got merged into the late/post-vedic or hindu civilization, but however had a distinct flavour due to the linguistic difference.
The proofs for these are present in our mythology and epics if we interpret them correctly in essence than take them literally and also from the fact that we hear the names of southers clans in them and also later stone edicts. examples are the aryan god murugan aka karthikeyan marrying a hill tribe of the south named valli as his second wife. similarly the myth of kumarikandam where the original tribes of south moved from a sunken island below india in the indian ocean connecting india with SEasia, australia, mauritius etc. The history of these cultural mergers into vedic fold was recorded as mythological stories rather than explicitly for reasons we dont know why (probably due to the hindu belief that one should never see the sources of rishis[rishimoolam] and rivers[nadimoolam] as it will al). Thus this period is also called puranic period or age of mythologies of india.
unfortunately all this has been politiced only recently to divide people and giving them seperate identities.
if we see the origins of Tamil, it surely did not come from sanskrit. as far as I have researched my hypothesis is that when the early prakrit speaking ppl came south from north they merged with some austro-asiatic(like the veddoids, andamanese and other hill tribes which still exist) speaking tribes in the south and this led to the evolution of tamil. the evolution of proto-tamil might have happened around 1500-500 bc and by 200 bc tamil had become a complete language but its grammer was codified only by 200 a.d by tolkappiar.
when I say "people from north merged with some austro-asiatic tribes" what I mean is that, tamil has had indo-aryan language influence right from its birth. but influence of vedic sanskrit(which is one of the indo-aryan languages and the primary one) was probably never there and classical sanskrit influenced tamil at later stages.
if u see the loan words from sanskrit(or one of the prakrits which all sound like sanskit mostly)in the earliest of tamil works, they are considerable in number.
so obviously when tamil was grown enuff to have litrary works it already had considerable influence.
more over the gramatical structure of classical tamil has considerable influence from indo-aryan. pali for sure had a great influence on tamil as pali was in srilanka atleast by ashokas times around 250 BC. and it surely would'nt have missed south indian region before going to srilanka. remember buddhism and jainism had its influence in south and tamil nadu as early as it had been. thiruvalluvar himself was a jain as many claim and talks about the adi bagavan which is the way jains call their god and their language was prakritic(a naturally evolved version of sanskrit and used by common folks and not the learneds). buddhism brought paali(another praktitic language in which buddhist writings were made) influence into tamil.
and all these happened much before or during the sangam(the word sangam is pali and a buddhist concept) age and during the regime of the earliest known pandyan kings. no tamil kings are known before them. and I bet the pandyas themselves were the first prakritic tribes from the north who merged with the austro-asiatic tribes of the south(probably originating from the submerged kumarikandam linking india with SEasia and australia by land) to create the tamil civilization with aryan and austro-asiatic influences.
the brahminical influence and classical sanskrit's influence could have come much later during the later sangam and bakthi movement times.
so with these we can say that tamil language took birth due to the merger or mixing of indo-aryan prakritic speaking people with austro-asiatic or some tribal language of the south.
Hence we see that it was only the language which was distinct formed from the merger of aryan and tribal influences but the people were very much from the north indian regions except the the tribes who migrated from further south. hence the term dravidian doesnot have a racial sense. at the max we can say that dravidians were of mixed ethinicity in their origin stages. but later we will see that more migrations from the north merged with the people of dravidian region and hence making them completely of post-vedic or hindu civilization. some examples of later migrants were the pallavas and cholas who came in only in the 1 millineum AD. these people had their origins from the pahalva,kamboja and other north western tribes of middle india.
I put some important links here which can be refered to understand the origins of various clans here.
an interesting article on spread of aryan/late vedic/shaivic hindu culture to south by michael danio
Tamil_people#History
early tamil history
kumari kandam, Agastya, Sangam , Pandya, Chera, Pallava, Chola
deccan south-central indian history
Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, Kalinga, Hoysala , Satavahana , Kadambas
origins and history of some south indian people or people of the dravida region. note that almost all of them have their origins in the northern parts of india.
Paravas , Nadar , Vanniyar , Vokkaliga , Padayatchi , reddi , reddiar , Mudaliar , nayak , Chettiar , Nair , Pillai , Velalar ...
To summarise, dravidian as a race is a modern invention of the 19th century especially by the missionaries.
Dravid is a sanskrit word(not southindian/dravidian word) which was mainly used to denote southern andra region and especially to seafaring people.
Dravidian ethinically is a subgenere of the main indian race I can say. They probably emerged from a mix of some prakrit speaking northern clans with austro-asiatic/veddoid tribes in the south at a very early time much before the vedics expanded from the Sindu-sarasvati region and hence have a distinct ethnic identity(also due to one lineage from another race like veddoid or austro-asiatic) from the mainstream vedic aryans or their counterparts in the north.
I cite many stories from south indian mythology which depict this. dravidians probably evolved from 3 or more major waves of migrations from the north and mixing with minor tribes of south.
here is a list.
1. veddoid/austro-asiatic tribes from sunken indian ocean islands(srilanka, lakshwadweep, maldives, marutius region or SEasian region?) move to a virtually empty south india. (kumari kandam myth)
probable timeline - 4000-3000 b.c
Region - deep southern tip of TN.
2. by this time there are alredy some northindian (prakrit speaking) clans which migrated to deccan regions and may be further south. (early yadu clans/proto-shaiva cults)
region - deccan northern T.N
3. first major wave of migration from the north was that of soem proto-shaivic aryan clans who assimilated soem hill tribes(probably ones who migrated from indian ocean) - murugan-valli mythology. starting of proto-dravidian language,culture, ethinicity.
probable timeline 3000 B.C
Region - deep south TN region.
(again yadu/anu clans)
4. second major waves of non vedic(asura) aryan clans (parashuram mythology) (anu/druhyu clans)
and minor vedic aryan(vamana myth) both to konkan/malabar region.
probable timeline 3000-2000 B.C (puru clan)
region - konkan/malabar - west coast.
5. Major vedic aryan waves happens a little later.
( rama/ravana/Agasthiya myths)
(ikshvaku/turuvasa/puru clans)
probable time line - after 2000 B.C - 500 b.c.
region - deccan till deep south. major assimilation.
evolution of hinduism from vedic and other sects of india.
tamil already developed from proto dravidian.
6. spread of non vedic cults like jainism and buddhism.
(recorded history)
(clans already assimilated into one common race and many 100s of minor clans/jatis)
500 b.c. to c.e.
tamil reaches maturity and becomes classic. other dravidian languages start evolving.
7. next major vedicization/sanskritization waves of the south by brahminic migrations.
(recorded history/brahminic migrations to various southern kingdoms on the invite of hindu kings)
all mixed clans already.
start of revival hinduism.
200-b.c. to 1000 a.d.
other major dravidian languages mature due to sanskritization.
my pointers are just a starting and a rough idea of my thought and needs a lot of refinement.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion Theory
This blog is about what I believe about the AIT/AMT/OIT etc after reading through thousands of such discussions on such topics and other references on the net, books, my school history books, discussions with various people in my and other societies/communities, many old timers, both orthodox and liberal people, including many non Indians.
Why is AIT important and why am I bothered when most Indians don't care?
It's like asking why history is important. The future of a country depends on its past and what it has learnt from the past and how it plans to move forward. The same applies to the future of the world and the future of every individual, community or society. History gives these entities an identity and an association or affiliation with various social/political groups. Wrongly written and taught history is dangerous as it creates wrong affiliations, which can lead people and their society and country in the wrong direction. Hence my interest in AIT which has been the most important factor in deciding Indian history as it is about the origins of Indians.
Another reason for my interest in AIT is that I have been interested in this topic from school time as I always wanted to know my real origins since there is so much emphasis on origins, pedigree, lineage etc in our society.
To understand my view you will need to get the big picture of the whole process of how civilizations evolve along with the political, linguistic, cultural, social and other aspects of evolution of humans. Now lets get a few basics right.
If you dint know what AIT/AMT/OIT/Aryan/Dravidian etc.. is you can take a look at http://wikipedia.org and http://www.britannica.com/ or just Google the definitions for these words. Though I should warn you that individuals have different definitions for these. i.e., the very definition is a bit ambiguous, but definitely in the same context that a group of light/white skinned barbaric/advanced people from north Europe/central Asia/ Caucasus region/ Siberia/(fill-in the region in europe or north asia you like) came and invaded/migrated to northern west India (pak,punjab) and eastern Iran around 1500 -1000 BC and destroyed/relocated/merged with the aboriginals of India who already lived there. Some say these aboriginals were the Dravidians or the Mundas or ( fill-in any lower caste in india ).
Similarly you can look out for the words Aryan/Dravidian etc in the same sources. Again these have ambiguities. The word Aryan is considered as a race of light /white skinned people who lived in Europe/central asia/caucass……blah blah… , they have blue eyes, blonde hair, are tall, well build and handsome ( Has any one seen a single Indian with such features?) and they are always men ;) . They are said to speak the indo-European/indo-iranian/indo-aryan languages. The definitions of some people can get so crazy that some Indian Brahmins claim they originate from Germany and more crazy Germans wrote the Vedas. Blame it on Max Muller/Macauley and co, the Indian education system, Indians with caste superiority complex, Politicians and the leftist/communists who together created a religion called Hinduism (more on this topic in another blog).
The Dravidians are supposed to be black/dark skinned people, with curly hair, short, stout and ugly (again how many south Indians look like this? And surely many northies do). They speak Dravidian languages, mostly Tamil (claimed as the oldest language in the world). Some claim they are the oldest civilization in the world, they inhabited the harrappan cities and were very advanced urban people and were destroyed by the barbaric Aryans, and so they fled to south India (but forgot how to create cities after they came south?). Some people even say they originated from mid east or Africa or elamite before they came to India and created the harrappan cities. They used to be following Indic religions (I won’t use the word Hindu to avoid ambiguity) some vedic, vedantic and some pagan (the word I use for non vedic/vedantic Indian beliefs), but more recently thanks to the Portuguese, AIT, Dravidian movement in tamil nadu most of them are Christians or atheists (read anti god).
Going by the definitions above and in the dictionaries, encyclopedias, school history books etc, one can see that there are now 2 races in India, one claims to be Dravidian and other called Aryan. Aryans are very advanced as they wrote the Vedas (which is indeed very advanced even by today’s science) and ruled over India and they are the north Indians (and south Indian Brahmins who migrated from north). Though the north Indians were advanced as they have knowledge of Vedas, it was because they were of superior European white origin they could do such things (as implicitly described by the European indologists whose research had a racial undercurrent).
Dravidians were the race once so great and advanced in Harappa but destroyed by Aryans and never became advanced again in the Aryan culture they were outcast and treated as slaves and untouchables. They somehow managed to secure their language tamil which is the oldest in the world, which is now being revived by the dravidian movement, thanks to their kind hearted british masters who with the help of their Christian missionaries made them think again and gave them what they call “self-respect”.
And India has only 2 races, northern Aryans and southern Dravidians. They are white and black respectively. So……blah blah. You get the idea how the hatred is created.. If you are an educated Indian you would know this by what you learnt in school, if you were not you wont read this but know that your uneducated acquaintances would have been brainwashed something like this by their political leaders giving them promised of better life, quarter adulterated alcohol, biryani and a lorry trip to their nearest city.
Does the above paragraph make sense to you? if you read between the lines, now we have a racist India similar to medieval (even now sometimes) Europe with black slaves and white masters, north/south divide, brahmin/non brahmin divide, anti vedic attitude, minority appeasement, continuity of caste system in the name of reservations, superiority of the westerners, anti-(hindu/hinduthva/hindu nationalism/Indian nationalism) attitude, mis-understanding of indian values, culture, systems (including caste system), destruction of ancient Indian science, knowledge and culture which was at least carried on by family tradition until English education was adopted by the Indian elite. even the name of our country is in greek. India. not bharat. our national language is Hindi an arabic/persian word, we are called hindu again arabic/persian. when will we get out of this colonial/slavish mindset?
OK. Now lets see what I believe was the pre-history of India before psychological barrier date of 1500 BC.
First of all I believe that the Vedic Indians (aka Aryans of AIT, I will not use the word Aryans, I’ll use the word vedics or vedic Indians) and the vedic civilization was located primarily on the banks of river sarasvati (rajasthan, gujarat area) and indus(Pak, punjab area) and its tributaries and the civilization extended till eastern to central iran(south east of Caspian sea) to Afghanistan and some central asian countries in the region of tajikistan,kyrgistan, some parts of uzbekistan and turkmenistan , parts of tibet, to the regions in the east of todays India where ganga might not have existed back then, but some smaller rivers did exist. i.e., the map of India included what is today northern India, Pakistan, parts of central and eastern iran, afghan, some central asian countries just above afghan and Kashmir etc. However this is a cultural map and not a political one. The region consisted of many kingdoms and may be bigger samrat dynasty, which controlled all these regions. However the heart of this civilization was in the sapta-sindu-sarasvathi region.
More over the vedic civilization had influence or links with the civilizations in the middle east, mesopotemia, Egypt, Greece many tribes northern central, northern asia, china etc, but these civilizations also would have had some influence on the vedics. i.e., some cultures were exported and some imported. The presence of Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas, etc in the Shrutis and Smritis show this.
Though there used to be constant conquests from various groups they were clearly mentioned as outcasts and foreigners in vedic litereature like the Vedas. It is also evident from their presence that these people did not have any racial differences and would mix and mingle with each other when they settled down in the vedic region and adopted to vedic life and surely more with the non vedic pagan following tribes that might have existed in this region.
This vedic civilization existed for many thousand years before the so called 1500 BC as mentioned by proponents of the AIT/AMT. Moreover they were also the inhabitants of the sindu sarasvathi cities (indus valley civilization). There is no way this can be proved wrong and many proofs to support it.
==dig==
There are so many arguments which are pro and against AIT including one supporting it from BBC (for those colonial slaves who will not accept anything unless endorsed by some European).
Here is one more proof (I realized when I came across IVC Scales and measurements on wikipedia), I can add to support the fact that the vedics were the inhabitants of the Indus valley civilization is the use of decimal metrics in their scales and measurements. It is a well known fact that the vedic people developed the indian numerals which was the first positional base 10 numeral systems used while all other numeric systems like Chinese, roman etc were progressive and had short limitations. i.e., vedics developed the numeric system with both positive and negative natural numbers (with no zero back then) tending to infinity. this would not be possible without much research which gave them the knowledge of brahman(infinity). no other religion has the concept of brahman. and brahman was important to have this kind of numerical numerical system. remember zero was invented in India during/after the times of buddha/mahavira when the concept of sunyatha or null or zero came in and other mathematical advancements were made.
We can also see that the Indian numeric system spread around the world by the arabs much after the disintegration of the IVC in the first millineum AD. (Now I won’t be surprised if the AIT proponents tell me that the Aryans invaded the IVC people, got their numeric system so they can use in in the Vedas and then killed them.)
one more I found when looking at harappan artifacts.
look at this info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#History and take a look at this http://www.harappa.com/indus5/page_420.html
another one I found,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Triseal.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization#Decline.2C_collapse_and_legacy section of IVC writes about Indra being the destroyer of harappans without even noticing the pic next to it showing swastika as a symbol of IVC people. isnt swastika the symbol of sarasvati, in the rigveda? Is this how wikipedia wants to be nuteral?
Also take a look here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Indus_Valley_Civilization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IndusValleySeals.JPG
and here is another important archeological proof of the continuity of IVC culture in ganga-yamuna vedic culture, the Ochre_Coloured_Pottery culture , the Cemetery_H_culture and the Gandhara_Grave_culture. We can see that the culture of the region from central asia to the vindhya region is the same including the indus valley, sarasvati region. i.e., they were the same civilization, why the hell on earth would then the so called aryans invade and destroy their own culture or merge with them selves? cause they are lunatics like some of the indologists? I wonder if people who propose AIT have anything called common sense or are they rationalists like Mr.EVR .
no where in ancient indian texts(sruthis, smirithis, puranas etc...) or mythology is there a mention of migrating from a foreign land or references to eurasia. infact the migrant or invading groups like the yavanas, pahalvas, sakas etc were clearly identified as foreigners.
on the contraty,classic Tamil texts mention that the tamil people came from or used to live in ten-madurai in Kumari_Kandam . though this is a mythological place, it surely represents the early tamils had moved in from some foreign sunken island(after the last ice age, when sea levels started raising 8k years back?). So I guess the dravidian migration theory might be real as opposed to the AMT.
==dig==
OK, to continue, the vedic civilization was an evolving culture and the mother of many asian cultures, beliefs and religions. The first known group to split from this belief were the Zoroastrians. i.e, the indian, iranians, and central asians were the same civilization before Zoroastrianism came, whose heart was in the sindhu sarasvati region. i.e., there was one common proto-vedic-zoroastric belief (again I don’t use the word religion as it has a different meaning) which got split into two. I would believe this happened because the Iranian side was more influenced by the civilizations to the west like the Mesopotamian one or even the greeks.
Also the proto-vedic-zorastrian language aka proto-indo-iranian was one of the prakritic language which later got refined into Sanskrit.
The deva ashura ideology clash is the basis for this split. I had referred on a link which bases the difference in the ideology between the devas and ashuras was that of living a spiritual or worldly life. Hence their respective gods represent these aspects.
From then on the two civilizations forked off though many devas are said to live in iran and asuras Indian region, the majority moved to the respective regions.
This could have probably happened over a period of time when the sarasvati dried up and those who moved east and south were more continued with the original Vedas and those who moved west created Zoroastrianism (of course under the leader ship of zarathurstra) probably due to influence of other foreign ideologies from further west, especially the growth of the Mesopotamian civilization.
Later the vedics moved futher east and south influencing or accommodating the pagan and other tribal beliefs of the region. i.e., they tried to modify their original rig vedic beliefs and tried to accommodate pagan/tribal beliefs into the system. This is inorder to convert them into the main stream sanatana dharma.
In the evolution of this civilization many new concepts like caste system, science and advancement happened. This should have the peak of vedic civilization. As the culture expanded through out Indian region and accommodating many from the tribes within Indian region and outside many cultures, practices, idol worship and many other aspects got added in order for the core belief of sanathana dharma to spread.
Note that during the whole time, Sanskrit was used only as an academic language, especially by highly learned men. It was a custom of showing off sophistication. Hence Sanskrit was used as it was considered a perfect language.
Although Sanskrit was used to recite/write the Vedas, regional prakrithic languages were used also to spread this culture/dharma. So we find that regional languages like proto-tamil, Pali and some prakrits were refined and developed. So we can say that tamil and Sanskrit were sister languages in the north and south and complimented each other during their later development. While later Sanskrit words and practices got absorbed into the other languages to improve them and thus creating new dialects and new languages like kannada, telegu, singala, nepali, hindi etc evolved.
After many centuries/millennia of continuation of this, things went out of control due to the various reasons like accommodating too many cultures, invasions, the level of freedom(read anarchy) that existed and other ritualistic customs from various tribal beliefs and probably the raise of family based caste system and other un-orderliness, new forms of beliefs like Buddhism and Jainism arose in India and so in other parts of the world.
We know history reasonably well and accepted after this.
Ironically(with respect to AIT),
The Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas, Chinas , Hunas , Paradas , Khashas , Kushans, etc..
1. were the people who invaded or tried to invade India from the said regions in euroasia and they were considered sudras and dasyus by the vedic Indians who called the upper castes as Arya as they considered themselves more refined noble and civilized.
2. they came into India and adopted the vedic way of life later, when some of them were elated to the status of kshatrya. remember Kanishka(chineese/turk kushans), indo-greeks, indo-Parthians, the huns etc were all hindus or buddhists but came from foreign origin during the medeival times.
3. The Vedic Indians were described by the ambassadors of the Greeks, Arabs, Chinese etc as people with dark to fair(not white) skin, curly to straight hair, slim, tall and agile. And the invading group of Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas etc had the features of the so called Aryans of the AIT. Infact in the indica, Megasthenes/Arrian even compare the “north Indians” with Ethiopians but with straight hair.
The vedic civilization and the Mesopotamian civilizations were contemporary and they are off shoots of the same proto indo-Mesopotamian people. This should have been a time much before people settled and got some order in life. Probably around 10000 BC, from here people migrated within the indo Mesopotamian area and one group became the Vedic and the other the mesopotemians. The idea of deva/ashura divide within them must have evolved then. Later this ashura influence also helped the persian group(which was initially closer to the vedics) split away from the vedic people forming the Persian civilization.
There were also mutual conquests, by both the Vedic and ashuric kings on each other and they also lived in each others regions. This can be seen even in the later millennia, as several Iranian and central Asian groups like those listed above tried to invade India, but they were really successful only after arrival of Islam. Similarly vedic kings invaded or occupied parts of the Iranian-Mesopotamian areas as we have seen by the Mitanni and hittite and even in later millennia where the Mauryas, Guptas held eastern parts of Iran and had cultural influence over the greek seleucid dynasty.
And now many people give various DNA theories to support AIT. I have seen various DNA theories which support and are against AIT.
Here is one which I agree with(partly, dont agree the language part)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes.html
India is a mix of various races from around eurasia. so depending on which group you do the DNA tests on the results can vary. The point in this topic is AIT is a myth and not that indians have _may also_ european DNA. I have spoken about the yavana,saka, intrutions into india many times. Even in the douth(so called dravidian) The andhras and the pallavas and hence cholas (the vellalar,reddy,vanniar etc.. castes of south india, the most adherent belivers of dravidian idea) are considered descendents of the Sakas and Pahalvas of persia.
The conspiracy theory in AIT is that it twisted history in such a way that we are divided as aryan/dravidian, a divide which doesnot exist. There was many invasions, there were many migrations from euroasia (and other parts probably,east-asia?) to india (obviously thru the northwest and probably the sea coast) at various points in time through out history. so were invasions and migrations through the south (by the seas and costal land routes) including the west europeans in the 2nd mil AD and also through the north-east(which is evident even today).
but none of them imposed their culture into india until the mohamadeans/modern europeans came. Instead, the invaders failed to conquer(though sometimes successful), and became slaves and dasyus in india and were considered sudhras. later they adopted the Indian(hindu/buddhist/jain and also Zoroastrianism) way of life and merged with the population.
Proof of this is the merging/conversion of the indo-greeks(yavanas) . So were various saka and pahalva (among others) kings who ruled parts india. And if I may include so were the early Pandyas who came from an unknown (is)land called kumarikandam. _Probably_ the only so called dravidian(sea-people/costal people) are the paravas(parayas?), Maravars and kuravars who are related to these early pandyas. Even they have mixed into the mainstream population and may not even have an exclusive DNA pattern today.
India is a mix of too many races and ethinic groups to be divided simply into two groups as Aryans and Dravidians and trust me so is the case in most other countries in the world. I heard in the the lonely planet travel show about central asia that there are atleast 200 known ethinic groups there. do the math for India if we had somany migrants from central asia alone.
The reason for people to blindly believe in AIT are many. mainly ignorance, careless attitude to history, political and other selfish reasons, other social reasons.
One among them is the perception that north indians are fair and south indians are dark. but this is a myth. a myth again created by the brits in the victorian times. when there was not much communication and links between the north and south. Just look at it, we Indians are a mix of various races, people in every region of india have their own physical characteristics, various shades of skin color etc depending on their geographic, social, food and other conditions.
Even the north west indians and pakistanis(majority) look significantly different from the north Indians(UP,bihar,MP area) even today. but overall the mainstream population of india is of the Indian race, which is a sub class of the indo- european caucassians, and clearly distinct from the other caucasians in the west. there is a higher mix of western caucasians(like the greeks, iranians etc in the north-west due to their proximity to the west. and a higher mix of chineese in the north east and a higher mix of austro-asiatic or javaneese in the south, central and east(from TN to bihar/bengal). so today is it is impossible to say any one to clearly belong to a particular race. Ethinically we are of some kind of Indian ethinicity. now lets not get a fake Aryan invasion myth give us fake identities and divide us for a identities that doesnt even exist and let the west steal away our past glory. Indian history should be written from the indian point of view and the real truth and not what the west wants it to be.
So to conclude,
Are we Indians aryans and dravidians racially/ethinically?
the answer to this is, the question is irrelevant and meaningless.
aryan means civilised/noble its not a race and dravidian means sea-people or east costal people(correct me). anyway the meaning doesnt refer to a race or ethinicity.
Are north indian and south indians different?
not the mainstream. though each region has a higher %age of some tribes. if we see properly except for people living in the north-west India and Pakistan which form part of central-asia as per the UN most northindians, central indians, east and south indians look physically the same. i.e., they are never white, like some pakis or punjabis. they are always pale yellow/white to weathish, to brown to dark brown, depending on the exposure to sun and other geographical and social(food) factors. Though they migth look a little different due to their local culture and lifestyle, I don't see much physical differences. There are some mangoloid mix in the east, north east and some austro-asiatic mix out the south and east.
Racially do indians have eurasian mix?
yes. ancient greeks, ancient persians, central asians, some modern west europeans, mangols, arabs, ancient and medeival turks, chinese and more have mixed at various times into india. but their mixing is negligible and the same as every other country in the world has had. Indians are mainly of indian race.
Did we have others mix with Indian?
Yes. surely from china, far east, and last but not the least, the people of the mythical kumarikandam(supposed to be sunk parts of SEasia/australia) , who bought with them proto-tamil.
Did Indians mix with others?
Yes. the ancient Indians not just moved to various parts of asia and europe, but also had a great influence on the culture of eastern europe (western europe din't exist then), middle east, central asia, north asia, china, SEasia, and other parts of the world until the advent of abhrahamic religions in these parts of the world. Infact the pagan beliefs of the world and the pre-islamic, pre-christian and pre-jew religions of the world mostly resemble various hindu beliefs and some were clearly early vedic.
On the controrary we can say that all beliefs of the world were similar due to the nature of human beings of that age, but later were forcefully converted to the christianity or islam.
Are iranians and central asians a different race/ethinicity than Indians?
not until 3000 years back. later they mixed more with the western races, while we mixed more with the eastern/south eastern races.
so is there a racial/ethnic identity for indians today.
yes. we are of the indian race/ethinicity.
Is race really important?
Surely no. but this socialo-political dogma has dogged human beings after the europeans colonised various regions of the world. AIT is an brainchild of the racist european indologists.
what are the origins of indian race then?
The main stream indians are an early off shoot (10000 years) of the indo-european humans and developed independently of them later. As was the trend then, migrations of human beings happened all over the world.
We had migrations and invasions from various parts of asia including some european and unknown places in SEasia, but the core of the indian culture and society remained the same and its unique to Indian subcontinent.
Ancient india included what is now India, pakistan, bangladesh, nepal, eastern parts of iran and afghanistan and its cultural influences existed all over Asia. Though the region south of the Vindhyas was not part of the early vedic times, they have been culturally influenced and later merged with Indian culture atleast as early as 1500-2000 BC and all known south indian countries including the earliest pandyas have been influenced by vedic culture (we dont know who existed in south india before that) Albeit they had a unique linguistic identity(proto-tamil) Initially, they absorbed vedic values and languages thus making the modern southindian languages over many centuries.
Infact over all these years India has been a victim of cultural destruction from the west. The indo-iranians spilit off some 3000 years back. most probably due to the influence of western religions and beliefs, afghanistan spilt off later, we lost influence over the central asian culture and now pakistan(all 3 due to influence of islam) . We could have almost lost tamil nadu and kerel if the christian missionaries were successful(well they were partly and so AIT). let us not loose any more of India and its culture. its probably time to get back and show the mighty super power that india was in the ancient world. The oldest and the most influencial civilization of the world then.
So is AIT/AMT/OIT completely wrong?
If you had read the blog completely the answers are there. to make it clear, All these are conspiracy theories cleated by various interest group. ofcourse the AIT came first, AMT and OIT came later as a compromise or anti idea. They all have some truth, but they being taken at face value and being taught in schools and taken by academia as true facts is wrong. None of them have real proofs.
Moreover though migrations happened in pre-historic times after the last ice age(10k years back) there was surely no mass migration after humans settled in the indian sub continet at least by 4000-6000 B.C. AIT clearly is a conspiracy theory aimed at divide and rule by the imperialist british, who had multiple advantages of this theory.
the following are clealy wrong in the AIT.
Some things right about AIT,
In summary AIT/AMT/OIT/Aryan/Dravidian are all words which should not have existed in our dictionary or encyclopedias. It din't two centuries back and it needs to be deleted soon. They have been created and used by different interest groups to divide ignorant people and exploit them. This includes not just the imperialist British and westerners but also many Indians, scholarly/ fame hungry individuals, politicians, communists and even many good people who where either ignorant or just wanted to use this to end some evils in our society without realising the impact it has on our psyche and identity.
About the real history of India, we do not yet have complete information and the earlier we go we see that the racial, linguistic, social and cultural lines blur. i.e., the more modern we get, the more differences(time and technology should re-blur those lines again hopefully).
but try to get the big picture from the information above and you can create a considerable timeline map with some bits and pieces missing. but clearly debunking the AIT myth.
Further reading, references and bibilography
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/
http://voi.org/books/rig/
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/scientific-verif-vedas.html
http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/myth_aryan_invasion/index.htm
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_agrawal.html
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/rig/
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/
http://www.sabha.info/research/aif.html
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=21177&tid=11500695&tim=1115263948&crt=5125086
http://sanandita.blogspot.com/2005/12/aryan-invasion.html
http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/vedicindia.html
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/scriptures.htm
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/literature.htm
http://www.newdharma.org/royal_chron.htm
http://projectsouthasia.sdstate.edu/docs/history/primarydocs/Foreign_Views/GreekRoman/Megasthenes-Indika.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hindu_swastika.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Zoroastrianism
http://www.salagram.net/aryaninvasion-page.htm#preface
http://voi.org/indology/MacaulayistHistorians.htm
http://www.atributetohinduism.com/aryan_invasion_theory.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_link.html
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_toi.html
http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html
http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/death_of_the_aryan_invasion_theory.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India
http://www.tamilnation.org/heritage/saraswathi.htm
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/tamilculture.html
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/
how the myth is spread and kept alive today today
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/bibai/bibai2.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/files/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan#Ancient_History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India#History
Also school books of any state or central institute in india/California?
There are many non-hindu sites also here. just incase u want to dismiss the bibiliography as pro-hindu nationalistic or what ever. wikipedia is considered to be always nuteral.
This blog is about what I believe about the AIT/AMT/OIT etc after reading through thousands of such discussions on such topics and other references on the net, books, my school history books, discussions with various people in my and other societies/communities, many old timers, both orthodox and liberal people, including many non Indians.
Why is AIT important and why am I bothered when most Indians don't care?
It's like asking why history is important. The future of a country depends on its past and what it has learnt from the past and how it plans to move forward. The same applies to the future of the world and the future of every individual, community or society. History gives these entities an identity and an association or affiliation with various social/political groups. Wrongly written and taught history is dangerous as it creates wrong affiliations, which can lead people and their society and country in the wrong direction. Hence my interest in AIT which has been the most important factor in deciding Indian history as it is about the origins of Indians.
Another reason for my interest in AIT is that I have been interested in this topic from school time as I always wanted to know my real origins since there is so much emphasis on origins, pedigree, lineage etc in our society.
To understand my view you will need to get the big picture of the whole process of how civilizations evolve along with the political, linguistic, cultural, social and other aspects of evolution of humans. Now lets get a few basics right.
If you dint know what AIT/AMT/OIT/Aryan/Dravidian etc.. is you can take a look at http://wikipedia.org and http://www.britannica.com/ or just Google the definitions for these words. Though I should warn you that individuals have different definitions for these. i.e., the very definition is a bit ambiguous, but definitely in the same context that a group of light/white skinned barbaric/advanced people from north Europe/central Asia/ Caucasus region/ Siberia/(fill-in the region in europe or north asia you like) came and invaded/migrated to northern west India (pak,punjab) and eastern Iran around 1500 -1000 BC and destroyed/relocated/merged with the aboriginals of India who already lived there. Some say these aboriginals were the Dravidians or the Mundas or ( fill-in any lower caste in india ).
Similarly you can look out for the words Aryan/Dravidian etc in the same sources. Again these have ambiguities. The word Aryan is considered as a race of light /white skinned people who lived in Europe/central asia/caucass……blah blah… , they have blue eyes, blonde hair, are tall, well build and handsome ( Has any one seen a single Indian with such features?) and they are always men ;) . They are said to speak the indo-European/indo-iranian/indo-aryan languages. The definitions of some people can get so crazy that some Indian Brahmins claim they originate from Germany and more crazy Germans wrote the Vedas. Blame it on Max Muller/Macauley and co, the Indian education system, Indians with caste superiority complex, Politicians and the leftist/communists who together created a religion called Hinduism (more on this topic in another blog).
The Dravidians are supposed to be black/dark skinned people, with curly hair, short, stout and ugly (again how many south Indians look like this? And surely many northies do). They speak Dravidian languages, mostly Tamil (claimed as the oldest language in the world). Some claim they are the oldest civilization in the world, they inhabited the harrappan cities and were very advanced urban people and were destroyed by the barbaric Aryans, and so they fled to south India (but forgot how to create cities after they came south?). Some people even say they originated from mid east or Africa or elamite before they came to India and created the harrappan cities. They used to be following Indic religions (I won’t use the word Hindu to avoid ambiguity) some vedic, vedantic and some pagan (the word I use for non vedic/vedantic Indian beliefs), but more recently thanks to the Portuguese, AIT, Dravidian movement in tamil nadu most of them are Christians or atheists (read anti god).
Going by the definitions above and in the dictionaries, encyclopedias, school history books etc, one can see that there are now 2 races in India, one claims to be Dravidian and other called Aryan. Aryans are very advanced as they wrote the Vedas (which is indeed very advanced even by today’s science) and ruled over India and they are the north Indians (and south Indian Brahmins who migrated from north). Though the north Indians were advanced as they have knowledge of Vedas, it was because they were of superior European white origin they could do such things (as implicitly described by the European indologists whose research had a racial undercurrent).
Dravidians were the race once so great and advanced in Harappa but destroyed by Aryans and never became advanced again in the Aryan culture they were outcast and treated as slaves and untouchables. They somehow managed to secure their language tamil which is the oldest in the world, which is now being revived by the dravidian movement, thanks to their kind hearted british masters who with the help of their Christian missionaries made them think again and gave them what they call “self-respect”.
And India has only 2 races, northern Aryans and southern Dravidians. They are white and black respectively. So……blah blah. You get the idea how the hatred is created.. If you are an educated Indian you would know this by what you learnt in school, if you were not you wont read this but know that your uneducated acquaintances would have been brainwashed something like this by their political leaders giving them promised of better life, quarter adulterated alcohol, biryani and a lorry trip to their nearest city.
Does the above paragraph make sense to you? if you read between the lines, now we have a racist India similar to medieval (even now sometimes) Europe with black slaves and white masters, north/south divide, brahmin/non brahmin divide, anti vedic attitude, minority appeasement, continuity of caste system in the name of reservations, superiority of the westerners, anti-(hindu/hinduthva/hindu nationalism/Indian nationalism) attitude, mis-understanding of indian values, culture, systems (including caste system), destruction of ancient Indian science, knowledge and culture which was at least carried on by family tradition until English education was adopted by the Indian elite. even the name of our country is in greek. India. not bharat. our national language is Hindi an arabic/persian word, we are called hindu again arabic/persian. when will we get out of this colonial/slavish mindset?
OK. Now lets see what I believe was the pre-history of India before psychological barrier date of 1500 BC.
First of all I believe that the Vedic Indians (aka Aryans of AIT, I will not use the word Aryans, I’ll use the word vedics or vedic Indians) and the vedic civilization was located primarily on the banks of river sarasvati (rajasthan, gujarat area) and indus(Pak, punjab area) and its tributaries and the civilization extended till eastern to central iran(south east of Caspian sea) to Afghanistan and some central asian countries in the region of tajikistan,kyrgistan, some parts of uzbekistan and turkmenistan , parts of tibet, to the regions in the east of todays India where ganga might not have existed back then, but some smaller rivers did exist. i.e., the map of India included what is today northern India, Pakistan, parts of central and eastern iran, afghan, some central asian countries just above afghan and Kashmir etc. However this is a cultural map and not a political one. The region consisted of many kingdoms and may be bigger samrat dynasty, which controlled all these regions. However the heart of this civilization was in the sapta-sindu-sarasvathi region.
More over the vedic civilization had influence or links with the civilizations in the middle east, mesopotemia, Egypt, Greece many tribes northern central, northern asia, china etc, but these civilizations also would have had some influence on the vedics. i.e., some cultures were exported and some imported. The presence of Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas, etc in the Shrutis and Smritis show this.
Though there used to be constant conquests from various groups they were clearly mentioned as outcasts and foreigners in vedic litereature like the Vedas. It is also evident from their presence that these people did not have any racial differences and would mix and mingle with each other when they settled down in the vedic region and adopted to vedic life and surely more with the non vedic pagan following tribes that might have existed in this region.
This vedic civilization existed for many thousand years before the so called 1500 BC as mentioned by proponents of the AIT/AMT. Moreover they were also the inhabitants of the sindu sarasvathi cities (indus valley civilization). There is no way this can be proved wrong and many proofs to support it.
==dig==
There are so many arguments which are pro and against AIT including one supporting it from BBC (for those colonial slaves who will not accept anything unless endorsed by some European).
Here is one more proof (I realized when I came across IVC Scales and measurements on wikipedia), I can add to support the fact that the vedics were the inhabitants of the Indus valley civilization is the use of decimal metrics in their scales and measurements. It is a well known fact that the vedic people developed the indian numerals which was the first positional base 10 numeral systems used while all other numeric systems like Chinese, roman etc were progressive and had short limitations. i.e., vedics developed the numeric system with both positive and negative natural numbers (with no zero back then) tending to infinity. this would not be possible without much research which gave them the knowledge of brahman(infinity). no other religion has the concept of brahman. and brahman was important to have this kind of numerical numerical system. remember zero was invented in India during/after the times of buddha/mahavira when the concept of sunyatha or null or zero came in and other mathematical advancements were made.
We can also see that the Indian numeric system spread around the world by the arabs much after the disintegration of the IVC in the first millineum AD. (Now I won’t be surprised if the AIT proponents tell me that the Aryans invaded the IVC people, got their numeric system so they can use in in the Vedas and then killed them.)
one more I found when looking at harappan artifacts.
look at this info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#History and take a look at this http://www.harappa.com/indus5/page_420.html
another one I found,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Triseal.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization#Decline.2C_collapse_and_legacy section of IVC writes about Indra being the destroyer of harappans without even noticing the pic next to it showing swastika as a symbol of IVC people. isnt swastika the symbol of sarasvati, in the rigveda? Is this how wikipedia wants to be nuteral?
Also take a look here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Indus_Valley_Civilization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IndusValleySeals.JPG
and here is another important archeological proof of the continuity of IVC culture in ganga-yamuna vedic culture, the Ochre_Coloured_Pottery culture , the Cemetery_H_culture and the Gandhara_Grave_culture. We can see that the culture of the region from central asia to the vindhya region is the same including the indus valley, sarasvati region. i.e., they were the same civilization, why the hell on earth would then the so called aryans invade and destroy their own culture or merge with them selves? cause they are lunatics like some of the indologists? I wonder if people who propose AIT have anything called common sense or are they rationalists like Mr.EVR .
no where in ancient indian texts(sruthis, smirithis, puranas etc...) or mythology is there a mention of migrating from a foreign land or references to eurasia. infact the migrant or invading groups like the yavanas, pahalvas, sakas etc were clearly identified as foreigners.
on the contraty,classic Tamil texts mention that the tamil people came from or used to live in ten-madurai in Kumari_Kandam . though this is a mythological place, it surely represents the early tamils had moved in from some foreign sunken island(after the last ice age, when sea levels started raising 8k years back?). So I guess the dravidian migration theory might be real as opposed to the AMT.
==dig==
OK, to continue, the vedic civilization was an evolving culture and the mother of many asian cultures, beliefs and religions. The first known group to split from this belief were the Zoroastrians. i.e, the indian, iranians, and central asians were the same civilization before Zoroastrianism came, whose heart was in the sindhu sarasvati region. i.e., there was one common proto-vedic-zoroastric belief (again I don’t use the word religion as it has a different meaning) which got split into two. I would believe this happened because the Iranian side was more influenced by the civilizations to the west like the Mesopotamian one or even the greeks.
Also the proto-vedic-zorastrian language aka proto-indo-iranian was one of the prakritic language which later got refined into Sanskrit.
The deva ashura ideology clash is the basis for this split. I had referred on a link which bases the difference in the ideology between the devas and ashuras was that of living a spiritual or worldly life. Hence their respective gods represent these aspects.
From then on the two civilizations forked off though many devas are said to live in iran and asuras Indian region, the majority moved to the respective regions.
This could have probably happened over a period of time when the sarasvati dried up and those who moved east and south were more continued with the original Vedas and those who moved west created Zoroastrianism (of course under the leader ship of zarathurstra) probably due to influence of other foreign ideologies from further west, especially the growth of the Mesopotamian civilization.
Later the vedics moved futher east and south influencing or accommodating the pagan and other tribal beliefs of the region. i.e., they tried to modify their original rig vedic beliefs and tried to accommodate pagan/tribal beliefs into the system. This is inorder to convert them into the main stream sanatana dharma.
In the evolution of this civilization many new concepts like caste system, science and advancement happened. This should have the peak of vedic civilization. As the culture expanded through out Indian region and accommodating many from the tribes within Indian region and outside many cultures, practices, idol worship and many other aspects got added in order for the core belief of sanathana dharma to spread.
Note that during the whole time, Sanskrit was used only as an academic language, especially by highly learned men. It was a custom of showing off sophistication. Hence Sanskrit was used as it was considered a perfect language.
Although Sanskrit was used to recite/write the Vedas, regional prakrithic languages were used also to spread this culture/dharma. So we find that regional languages like proto-tamil, Pali and some prakrits were refined and developed. So we can say that tamil and Sanskrit were sister languages in the north and south and complimented each other during their later development. While later Sanskrit words and practices got absorbed into the other languages to improve them and thus creating new dialects and new languages like kannada, telegu, singala, nepali, hindi etc evolved.
After many centuries/millennia of continuation of this, things went out of control due to the various reasons like accommodating too many cultures, invasions, the level of freedom(read anarchy) that existed and other ritualistic customs from various tribal beliefs and probably the raise of family based caste system and other un-orderliness, new forms of beliefs like Buddhism and Jainism arose in India and so in other parts of the world.
We know history reasonably well and accepted after this.
Ironically(with respect to AIT),
The Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas, Chinas , Hunas , Paradas , Khashas , Kushans, etc..
1. were the people who invaded or tried to invade India from the said regions in euroasia and they were considered sudras and dasyus by the vedic Indians who called the upper castes as Arya as they considered themselves more refined noble and civilized.
2. they came into India and adopted the vedic way of life later, when some of them were elated to the status of kshatrya. remember Kanishka(chineese/turk kushans), indo-greeks, indo-Parthians, the huns etc were all hindus or buddhists but came from foreign origin during the medeival times.
3. The Vedic Indians were described by the ambassadors of the Greeks, Arabs, Chinese etc as people with dark to fair(not white) skin, curly to straight hair, slim, tall and agile. And the invading group of Yavanas, Kambojas, Sakas (Scythians), Pahlavas etc had the features of the so called Aryans of the AIT. Infact in the indica, Megasthenes/Arrian even compare the “north Indians” with Ethiopians but with straight hair.
There were also mutual conquests, by both the Vedic and ashuric kings on each other and they also lived in each others regions. This can be seen even in the later millennia, as several Iranian and central Asian groups like those listed above tried to invade India, but they were really successful only after arrival of Islam. Similarly vedic kings invaded or occupied parts of the Iranian-Mesopotamian areas as we have seen by the Mitanni and hittite and even in later millennia where the Mauryas, Guptas held eastern parts of Iran and had cultural influence over the greek seleucid dynasty.
Here is one which I agree with(partly, dont agree the language part)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes.html
India is a mix of various races from around eurasia. so depending on which group you do the DNA tests on the results can vary. The point in this topic is AIT is a myth and not that indians have _may also_ european DNA. I have spoken about the yavana,saka, intrutions into india many times. Even in the douth(so called dravidian) The andhras and the pallavas and hence cholas (the vellalar,reddy,vanniar etc.. castes of south india, the most adherent belivers of dravidian idea) are considered descendents of the Sakas and Pahalvas of persia.
The conspiracy theory in AIT is that it twisted history in such a way that we are divided as aryan/dravidian, a divide which doesnot exist. There was many invasions, there were many migrations from euroasia (and other parts probably,east-asia?) to india (obviously thru the northwest and probably the sea coast) at various points in time through out history. so were invasions and migrations through the south (by the seas and costal land routes) including the west europeans in the 2nd mil AD and also through the north-east(which is evident even today).
but none of them imposed their culture into india until the mohamadeans/modern europeans came. Instead, the invaders failed to conquer(though sometimes successful), and became slaves and dasyus in india and were considered sudhras. later they adopted the Indian(hindu/buddhist/jain and also Zoroastrianism) way of life and merged with the population.
Proof of this is the merging/conversion of the indo-greeks(yavanas) . So were various saka and pahalva (among others) kings who ruled parts india. And if I may include so were the early Pandyas who came from an unknown (is)land called kumarikandam. _Probably_ the only so called dravidian(sea-people/costal people) are the paravas(parayas?), Maravars and kuravars who are related to these early pandyas. Even they have mixed into the mainstream population and may not even have an exclusive DNA pattern today.
India is a mix of too many races and ethinic groups to be divided simply into two groups as Aryans and Dravidians and trust me so is the case in most other countries in the world. I heard in the the lonely planet travel show about central asia that there are atleast 200 known ethinic groups there. do the math for India if we had somany migrants from central asia alone.
One among them is the perception that north indians are fair and south indians are dark. but this is a myth. a myth again created by the brits in the victorian times. when there was not much communication and links between the north and south. Just look at it,
Even the north west indians and pakistanis(majority) look significantly different from the north Indians(UP,bihar,MP area) even today. but overall the mainstream population of india is of the Indian race, which is a sub class of the indo- european caucassians, and clearly distinct from the other caucasians in the west. there is a higher mix of western caucasians(like the greeks, iranians etc in the north-west due to their proximity to the west. and a higher mix of chineese in the north east and a higher mix of austro-asiatic or javaneese in the south, central and east(from TN to bihar/bengal). so today is it is impossible to say any one to clearly belong to a particular race. Ethinically we are of some kind of Indian ethinicity. now lets not get a fake Aryan invasion myth give us fake identities and divide us for a identities that doesnt even exist and let the west steal away our past glory. Indian history should be written from the indian point of view and the real truth and not what the west wants it to be.
So to conclude,
Are we Indians aryans and dravidians racially/ethinically?
the answer to this is, the question is irrelevant and meaningless.
aryan means civilised/noble its not a race and dravidian means sea-people or east costal people(correct me). anyway the meaning doesnt refer to a race or ethinicity.
Are north indian and south indians different?
not the mainstream. though each region has a higher %age of some tribes. if we see properly except for people living in the north-west India and Pakistan which form part of central-asia as per the UN most northindians, central indians, east and south indians look physically the same. i.e., they are never white, like some pakis or punjabis. they are always pale yellow/white to weathish, to brown to dark brown, depending on the exposure to sun and other geographical and social(food) factors. Though they migth look a little different due to their local culture and lifestyle, I don't see much physical differences. There are some mangoloid mix in the east, north east and some austro-asiatic mix out the south and east.
Racially do indians have eurasian mix?
yes. ancient greeks, ancient persians, central asians, some modern west europeans, mangols, arabs, ancient and medeival turks, chinese and more have mixed at various times into india. but their mixing is negligible and the same as every other country in the world has had. Indians are mainly of indian race.
Did we have others mix with Indian?
Yes. surely from china, far east, and last but not the least, the people of the mythical kumarikandam(supposed to be sunk parts of SEasia/australia) , who bought with them proto-tamil.
Did Indians mix with others?
Yes. the ancient Indians not just moved to various parts of asia and europe, but also had a great influence on the culture of eastern europe (western europe din't exist then), middle east, central asia, north asia, china, SEasia, and other parts of the world until the advent of abhrahamic religions in these parts of the world. Infact the pagan beliefs of the world and the pre-islamic, pre-christian and pre-jew religions of the world mostly resemble various hindu beliefs and some were clearly early vedic.
On the controrary we can say that all beliefs of the world were similar due to the nature of human beings of that age, but later were forcefully converted to the christianity or islam.
Are iranians and central asians a different race/ethinicity than Indians?
not until 3000 years back. later they mixed more with the western races, while we mixed more with the eastern/south eastern races.
yes. we are of the indian race/ethinicity.
Is race really important?
Surely no. but this socialo-political dogma has dogged human beings after the europeans colonised various regions of the world. AIT is an brainchild of the racist european indologists.
what are the origins of indian race then?
The main stream indians are an early off shoot
We had migrations and invasions from various parts of asia including some european and unknown places in SEasia, but the core of the indian culture and society remained the same and its unique to Indian subcontinent.
Ancient india included what is now India, pakistan, bangladesh, nepal, eastern parts of iran and afghanistan and its cultural influences existed all over Asia. Though the region south of the Vindhyas was not part of the early vedic times, they have been culturally influenced and later merged with Indian culture atleast as early as 1500-2000 BC and all known south indian countries including the earliest pandyas have been influenced by vedic culture (we dont know who existed in south india before that) Albeit they had a unique linguistic identity(proto-tamil) Initially, they absorbed vedic values and languages thus making the modern southindian languages over many centuries.
Infact over all these years India has been a victim of cultural destruction from the west. The indo-iranians spilit off some 3000 years back. most probably due to the influence of western religions and beliefs, afghanistan spilt off later, we lost influence over the central asian culture and now pakistan(all 3 due to influence of islam) . We could have almost lost tamil nadu and kerel if the christian missionaries were successful(well they were partly and so AIT). let us not loose any more of India and its culture. its probably time to get back and show the mighty super power that india was in the ancient world. The oldest and the most influencial civilization of the world then.
So is AIT/AMT/OIT completely wrong?
If you had read the blog completely the answers are there. to make it clear, All these are conspiracy theories cleated by various interest group. ofcourse the AIT came first, AMT and OIT came later as a compromise or anti idea. They all have some truth, but they being taken at face value and being taught in schools and taken by academia as true facts is wrong. None of them have real proofs.
Moreover though migrations happened in pre-historic times after the last ice age(10k years back) there was surely no mass migration after humans settled in the indian sub continet at least by 4000-6000 B.C. AIT clearly is a conspiracy theory aimed at divide and rule by the imperialist british, who had multiple advantages of this theory.
the following are clealy wrong in the AIT.
- A large mass of people migrated "in waves" from Central Asia/eastern eutope into India.
- That they are called aryans(what an irony, barbaric invaders calling themselves noble?)
- That the invasion/migration happened around 1500 B.C
- They bought horses to india
- They are majority of the north indians today. (Again the twist is they refer to north-west and not north india. This is just like they say Alexander conquored north India, but it was actually only the north west. as far as the Indus not beyond. i.e., not even anywhere in todays India.)
- They are the brahmins of India today.
- They are the upper castes of India today.
- That the so called Dravidians inhabited north India and they are now the south indians as they were pushed south by the so called aryans.
- The (South Indians) Dravidans are a separate race, compared to the Aryans(north Indians).
- That they brought in the vedic culture from their homeland(IE homeland) to India.
- That the vedic religion was racist as they destroyed dark skinned people(so were rama, krishna, draupati all dravidians?).
- majority Indians originate from the indo-european group of people(but before we could differenciate as them as europeans, westasians, central asians etc. i.e., before 5000 B.C atleast)
- Indo-iranian were the common ancestors(as they were the same civilizations, which split off in phases between 3000-1000 B.c, until the advent of zoroastrianism)
- that north-west indians have a distinctively higher mix of modern caucasoids (as they are more prone to western attack and also the weather conditions, similar to north-east indians being more SEAsian like and deep south indians being more austro-asiatic)
- that humas migrated from the IE homeland(where ever it is, it could be north west India or iran too) to India
- but the first migrations happened at least before 4000 B.C into a virtually empty land and hardly any major groups already inhabiting the indian subcontinent, at this age most humans were nomadic and did not have homelands(one possibility).
- Another possibility is that the IE homeland is indeed india/iran as these would haev been the warmest places on earth after the last ice age. IE homeland being central asia or russian steppies has less possibility as these would have been so cold that it was impossible for people to live there.
- The group which migrated were nomadic
- They were not aryans as aryan means civilized and these people were sure not so.
- vedic Indians just like other civilizations did move out of India for preaching, trade and imperialistic conquests in vedic times too.
- They surely had migrated to western iran, mesopotemia, central asia (probably greece and eastern europe too) in vedic times and to europe(gypsies) and SEasia(pallava/cholas) in medeival times.
- OIT has a higher possibility than AMT(AIT is impossible) as the IE homeland where earliest Indo-europeans originate coudl only be in the tropical zones of today. As these would have been the warmest places on earth after the last ice age. IE homeland being central asia or russian steppies has less possibility as these would have been so cold that it was impossible for people to live there.
In summary AIT/AMT/OIT/Aryan/Dravidian are all words which should not have existed in our dictionary or encyclopedias. It din't two centuries back and it needs to be deleted soon. They have been created and used by different interest groups to divide ignorant people and exploit them. This includes not just the imperialist British and westerners but also many Indians, scholarly/ fame hungry individuals, politicians, communists and even many good people who where either ignorant or just wanted to use this to end some evils in our society without realising the impact it has on our psyche and identity.
About the real history of India, we do not yet have complete information and the earlier we go we see that the racial, linguistic, social and cultural lines blur. i.e., the more modern we get, the more differences(time and technology should re-blur those lines again hopefully).
but try to get the big picture from the information above and you can create a considerable timeline map with some bits and pieces missing. but clearly debunking the AIT myth.
Further reading, references and bibilography
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/
http://voi.org/books/rig/
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/scientific-verif-vedas.html
http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/myth_aryan_invasion/index.htm
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/rig/
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/
http://www.sabha.info/research/aif.html
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=21177&tid=11500695&tim=1115263948&crt=5125086
http://sanandita.blogspot.com/2005/12/aryan-invasion.html
http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/vedicindia.html
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/scriptures.htm
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/literature.htm
http://www.newdharma.org/royal_chron.htm
http://projectsouthasia.sdstate.edu/docs/history/primarydocs/Foreign_Views/GreekRoman/Megasthenes-Indika.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hindu_swastika.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Zoroastrianism
http://www.salagram.net/aryaninvasion-page.htm#preface
http://voi.org/indology/MacaulayistHistorians.htm
http://www.atributetohinduism.com/aryan_invasion_theory.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_link.html
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_toi.html
http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html
http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/death_of_the_aryan_invasion_theory.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India
http://www.tamilnation.org/heritage/saraswathi.htm
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/tamilculture.html
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/
how the myth is spread and kept alive today today
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/bibai/bibai2.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/files/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan#Ancient_History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India#History
Also school books of any state or central institute in india/California?
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